460GTX or 560 GTX - CPU Bottleneck

Thank you for the quick reply, in regards to resoluation I'm only playing at 1680 x 1050.

The specific game I'll be upgrading for is a new MMO called Rift. In regards to the Quad core, in a perfect world I would upgrade the entire system but at this point that won't be happening (possibly in the fall)....

Both of those video cards would give you a lot of extra performance. I do agree with AMD655 that your CPU, if not overclocked, would likely limit the full potential of those cards. Just pick up a Hyper 212+ for $30 along with your video card and some thermal paste and you'll be set to overclock that thing.

Generally as far as bottlenecks are concerned, at low resolutions CPUs are usually going to bottleneck to system more often than the GPU because the GPU can push out frames faster than the CPU is able to run the physics and other computations. At higher resolutions the GPU becomes the bottleneck because it cannot render frames fast enough to keep up with the updated data that the CPU is computing.

Core 2 overclocking guide. Check this out. This guide has a lot of good info, and there are plenty of other guides on the rest of the interwebz. And then there's always the forums here if you run into a problem or aren't csure about how to do something.

Thank you again for the responses.

The issue with the overclock isn't really the CPU or the heatsink I have. I have (it's been three years i'll mess this name up for sure) but an Artic cooling 7?

Anyways the issue is the motherboard, I used to have an Asus P5N-D which was the nvidia 750I SLI chipset board by Asus. The board was utter garbage I had to send it back numerous times over the 1.5 years I owned it and it cost me $35 a pop for shipping. I got sick of this and asked them for a brand new board not a refurb, then sold it and bought a cheap Asrock board.

With the ASUS board when it did work correctly I had my CPU Oc'd to 3.8 ghz (stock speed is 3.0 ghz). Currently I just fiddled with it last night and was about to get it to 3.462 ghz, anything more and it will crash.

*** So in the end considering I can get a Nvidia 460GTX for $120.00 should I buy this, or spend $275 on an Nvidia 560 GTX? .... The price difference likely doesn't make sense does it?

Not a Big Bottleneck if you can manage to take cpu above 3.8ghz.it should be fine.just pair your rig with gtx 460 anything up might be a severe bottleneck.

It wont be a major bottleneck just remember to turn up all the eye candy so the load is on the gpu. I would recommend a gtx 465 slightly more then the gtx 460 but worth it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I have the EVGA version of both the 460 and the 465 (just standard versions with stock cooler, nothing SOC). At stock the 460 is slghtly better but when they are both overclocked as high as I can get them the 465 is actually 3%-5% faster than the 460 (although the 460 has some old bios that limits my core clock to 845 which seems low for a 460). The 465 is WAY hotter and noisier though, it tops out at 85 and the 460 never goes past 60. With price being equal the 460 is probably a better choice, but the 465 is far from crap.

As far as your e8400 it absolutely win not be a bottleneck at your resolution for either the 460 or the 560.

None taken, I just own one I didn't make it  

@OP, I intend to order a couple of 560's to run in SLi on an e8400/680i because two 8800GT's do not get "bottlenecked" by the CPU so a single 560 won't, don't know about two though.

I cant beleive we keep getting this, A E8400 WILL NOT bottleneck a 5850. It (5850) isnt slowed by a X3 720 which is a weaker CPU than the 8400 so quite how a 8400 is meant to be an issue I really dont know.
IF A 6950 were to be restricted at all which I really doubt then it would be by a very very, non noticably small amount.

Of course when things like multi threading etc are a factor then obviously the core duo is going to be slower and it will show but thats down to the game engine. In a game that isnt core dependant there will be no issues at all.

Mactronix  

It still seems as though some people like to throw the "bottleneck" term about because they think it makes them seem that they know what they're talking about.

If were comparing the 768mb it isnt as fast as a gtx465. From what i hear the gtx465 overclocks fairly well.

Source http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1360/10/

I prefer to just throw bottles about.

I should probably throw this out there since I hadn't mentioned it before (don't think it would be an issue) but due to my crap motherboard I'm still on PCI-E 1.1...

I don't imagine either of these cards by themselves would really benefit from 2.0? i know they will if put in SLI but I won't be doing that.

The cheapest 470 SSC i found was 200$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Well I personally would go with the gtx 465 for the price and performance its a good value. Anything higher wouldnt fair well with cpu. If you want to spend more 560TI.

I don't have one. Please explain to me why your against it so much. Sure it eats up more power and gets a bit hotter but with the price and performance ratio it doesn't seem to bad of a deal. The link i posted up before shows it performs better then the 460 768mb and slightly slower then the 1gig model.

Well regardless whatever you find cheaper is a better deal since there all in the same performance bracket.

I have 2 of them, but I still wouldn't recommend one when you can get a 1G 460 (not SE) for 150 bucks. It's pretty much the same performance without the "issues".

I had a similar system as yours; an 8800GT Turboforce Edition (700Mhz Core, 1715 Shaders, 1840 RAM)
and an E8400; I didn't overclock it tough.

- with Metro 2033 the E8400 was a bottleneck; I upgraded to a Q9550 and even at stock clocks - 2.83Ghz - lower than the E8400, I saw a huge improvement in framerates. Simply put, I had upgraded to a newer GPU, and the game was still slow. Upgraded the CPU and solved that problem.
- GTA IV also takes advantage of more than 2 cores
- newer games will take advantage of more cores, and it's best to have more cores than more clockspeed for newer games - as opposed to older games where dual core clockspeed is more important)


If I were you I'd get the GTX460 like I did, save the money from the difference the GTX560 would cost, sell the Xeon while it is worth something, and with all the money buy a Quad Core and overclock it a bit.

That's what I did. I have a more balanced system now.

Check This out ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV7xH2TsHFA&feature=relm... )

Thank you guys for all the input but this thread can now be closed.

I found a good deal on an ATI 5870 ... it was $209.99 which is a heck of a deal, the card is a bit older but still one of the best cards you can buy.

As far as the CPU goes I understand it could cause me problems but I'll likely be building a new computer in the fall. With the new GPU I just purchased it will be one less compenent I'll need to buy.